but at last,
after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's History of Paul's, Stows London, Gesner,
History of Trent, besides Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont's plays,
I at last chose Dr. Fuller's Worthys, the Cabbala or Collections of
Letters of State, and a little book, Delices de Hollande, with another
little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure: and Hudibras,
both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I
cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies. My mind being thus
settled, I went by linke home, and so to my office, and to read in
Rushworth; and so home to supper and to bed. Calling at Wotton's, my
shoemaker's, today, he tells me that Sir H. Wright is dying; and that
Harris is come to the Duke's house again; and of a rare play to be acted
this week of Sir William Davenant's: the story of Henry the Eighth with
all his wives.

11th. Up and abroad toward the Wardrobe, and going out Mr. Clerke met me
to tell me that Field has a writ against me in this last business of
L30 10s., and that he believes he will get an execution against me this
morning, and though he told me it could not be well before noon, and
that he would stop it at the Sheriff's, yet it is hard to believe with
what fear I did walk and how I did doubt at every man I saw and do start
at the hearing of one man cough behind my neck. I to, the Wardrobe and
there missed Mr. Moore. So to Mr. Holden's and evened all reckonings
there for hats, and then walked to Paul's Churchyard and after a little
at my bookseller's and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin's Will in
French. I to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse
with an Iron Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our
natural manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede
to bring in three times more than ever they did and our owne Ironworks
be lost, as almost half of them, he says, are already. Then I went and
sat by Mr. Harrington, and some East country merchants, and talking of
the country about Quinsborough, and thereabouts, he told us himself that
for fish, none there, the poorest body, will buy a dead fish, but must
be alive, unless it be in winter; and then they told us the manner of
putting their nets into the water. Through holes made in the thick ice,
they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred
and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken at one
draught. And then the people come wi